Businessman and potential Senate candidate Marc Cenedella said in a phone interview this afternoon that he takes “full responsibility” for blog posts under his name that included bawdy observations on sex, drugs and women.

He also accused U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of conducting a “smear campaign against a private citizen.”

In his first interview since The New York Times reported on the blog posts, Cenedella said he was unsure of who, exactly, wrote the 1,000-plus posts on the now defunct website called Stone.

“I can’t tell you which author wrote which one,” he said. “I’m the publisher, I take responsibility for the whole thing.”

Cenedella is the founder of the popular jobs-searching website theladders.com and is considering a run for the Republican nomination to challenge Gillibrand, a Democrat, in the fall.

Gillibrand and surrogates quickly pounced on the story yesterday, with the lawmaker saying the news showed Cenedella lacked judgment. Many of the posts in question were added to a blog that was used a test site for Cenedella’s personal blog on theladders.com, which was disabled.

Cenedella said a half dozen people, including him, were contributing to an earlier blog he launched in 2003 and that a college roommate who died in 2007 wrote about half.

He compared the website to The Onion and Gawker, explaining: “Stone was an edgy blog created by me in 2003 and had a few collaborators.”

Cenedella also accused Gillibrand of conducting a smearing a private citizen and accused her campaign of making The Times aware of the posts.

“This is a smear attack by Kirsten Gillibrand who obviously has an interest in keeping me out of the race,” he said.

Cenedella has said that his level of seriousness in considering a run is “9.2 out of 10″ and has traveled the start gauge support. This morning Cenedella counterattacked by blasting Gillibrand’s turnaround on the anti-piracy law PIPA.

Asked if he thought his affiliation with the blog would hurt his chances of winning the nomination, Cenedella artfully deflected

“I think her smears hurt her chances,” said Cenedella, who would be making his first run for office. “What I know is jobs and when I go around the state people tell me they need to bring jobs to NYS. The only job she cares about is her own. Getting smeared by a U.S. senator has made me a lot more optimistic about my chances.”

Update: Glen Caplin, a Gillibrand spokesman, says in response that Cenedella still hasn’t given a full explanation.

“There have been almost as many excuses from “hacking” to “spiders” over the last 24 hours as there are offensive blog posts about women, sex and drugs by Cenedella,” Caplin said.

“Fighting against New York values as a leadership member of Club for Growth is offensive enough. Now we know that Cenedella is also responsible for lewd and offensive public statements that shows a complete lack of judgment. To make matters worse, he denied responsibility for his actions, and only changed his tune after he ran out of excuses.”

“Marc Cenedella has yet to answer the real question, why did he find it appropriate to publish such clearly offensive material under his name and why did it take him 24 hours to claim responsibility? New Yorkers deserve a full explanation, they’re still waiting.”

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